 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are going to discuss about the disability bill that has been recently passed in the parliament to discuss the issue we have with us, Murli Dharan, who is Secretary of National Platform for Rights of Disabled. So, welcome to NewsClick. Thank you. This bill has been passed in the parliament and it has been result of a long struggle that has been carried out by different disability rights organizations, activists. So, what are the provisions of this bill and how is it going to benefit people? Bill is actually in compliance to a convention that India has signed actually. We call United Nations Convention on Rights of Person Disabilities. The UNCRPD mandates once you sign a sign a international convention, UN convention, it is mandatory, it is obligatory on any signing country to harmonize its law in accordance with the convention that we have signed. It is to comply with this international obligation that this law has actually been, bill has actually been drafted and brought forward. So, India signed, India was one of the first countries to actually sign and ratify this treaty. Which year? 2007 actually. But it actually took now nearly. Almost a decade now. Almost a decade to actually get a lock pass to the country. This actually process began in 2009 actually. But 2012 a draft bill was brought about, there were problems with the draft and all that. 2014 actually February, the first bill was introduced in the in the in the rest of actually. Actually, UPA government was on its way out at that time and the bill was introduced. There were several issues with the bill which several concerns about the bill and we were not in total agreement with the bill. So, we had asked at that time, we had demanded rather at that time that this bill should not be passed in this form and it should be sent to a parliamentary standing committee. And the demand actually though we had raised it from outside, it was supported Sitaramachary from the CPM actually had raised this issue in the Lok Sabha and had demanded that admission to the standing committee. The chair agreed that it was sent to the standing committee. But 2000 May, 2015 the standing committee submitted its report to the to the new government. From May 2015 actually we have been asking demanding from the government that they bring in a bring in amendments or an action taken report based on the recommendation made by the standing committee and the concerns expressed by it. So, again this August at our central executive meeting we have decided that we should unless we exert more pressure on the government nothing is going to happen. So, again we started a campaign began a signature campaign then had state level demonstrations and mobilizations again it culminated in a rally in Jantar Mantra again this year also. December 3 is actually celebrated as international day of persons with disabilities but we were not celebrating either last year or this year actually but before December 3 actually December 2 on December 2 we came to know that actually a day before that the government had announced through a PIB release that the union cabinet has finalized certain amendments that is going to move it on December 2. So, we are cautious on December 3 because what the government is going to bring we don't know some announcements had been made some of them were actually positive in nature. Positive in the nature in the senses some of our concerns were addressed in the amendments that the government was going to bring about negative in the nature because some of the progressive things that were spelled out there were part of the 2014 bill were diluted. What are the positive aspects he asked me I would say see there was no definition about discrimination in the bill what constitute discrimination of the grounds of disability was not part of the bill that has been that has actually been introduced as an amendment this was one of our demands that we had raised and also the definition as well as what constitute disability has also been a bit more widened now as compared to the original bill this is one and there are more in the sense that you see what do you say sign language has been as a language has been recognized and the communication business video video video and audio the those things have been recognized now so there are there is and captioning TV captioning has been made mandatory now sign language things have been made mandatory now so all these things were not part of the original bill which have come in the form of amendments now which are welcome but at the same time the cons there are two major one major concern that we had actually talked about that this clause 3.3 which says that which is which says that a person with disability can be discriminated against if there is a legitimate ground for that to if it is to achieve a legitimate aim it is achieve a legitimate aim we had said this is an anti-discriminatory legislation you can't have a clause which legitimizes discrimination exactly this was one of our main contention or main concerns against the bill for which we said this cannot be passed in this form as it is this amendment that the government had brought official amendment that came to this bill was did not address that concern adequately instead of appropriate means they said it is proportional means actually not this actually does not alter the formulation in any any substantive manner so we asked for a we've is stuck to over this thing that this should also be this should be deleted this is where cpm MPs have actually helped us in parliament also they moved specific amendments asking for the deletion of this clause on our request the minister sitara maturi had raised it kk dargesh and cp Narayan had raised had moved specific amendments for deletion of this clause on the basis of the discussion on the basis of this amendment the minister the minister actually while replying to the discussion said that he will see to it that in the room while the rooms rules are being framed this taken this thing will be taken care of and it will be so done that it would not be to the disadvantage of the disabled that was a good assurance that was given the parliament and again when chair also said that minister cannot take go back on his assurance that was something one of the good thing second concern we had one of one of the second more major concern we had was about what we call employment section actually the employment currently there is a reservation of three percent after the 1995 act but this in this their provision original pool had a provision for five percent it has been reduced now through amendments this percentage of reservations has been reduced to three percent four percent sorry four percent the number of disabilities that are covered have risen from nine to from seven to 21 now okay so 14 new disabilities have been averaged while the criteria for reservation has been reduced percentage of the reservation has been reduced it's not I'm not saying that all of them are going to get reservation no one of them are not going to get reservation but even even other ways the scope has has been an ambit has been widened so you need to have a proportionally higher number of percentages to address this issue instead of doing that what you've done you've just added one percent to it which is reduced one percent from the existing five percent that has been proposed by the by the this thing existing is three percent what was proposed was five percent now it has been reduced to four percent this is one thing but second thing is much more dangerous thing what we felt out is there is a provision which says that this would be in post meant to be filled by persons disabilities see the earlier existing act also 95 act there was a provision which was misinterpreted by enforcement age by government or various state governments to see that reservations are given to disabled persons only in post that are identified for them see disabled are not employed or reservations are not against all posts all posts are not open for persons with disabilities there are categories or posts that are identified in which these disabled people are recruited so once you say identified it will be only on those posts they are given so it's it's also a more limited scope in yes it is open to misinterpretation so we had sent this clause that meant to be reserved for persons with disabilities should be deleted the same again CP MPs had moved the same amendment and our minister has given an assurance on that also to see that rules are framed in such a manner that that misinterpretation is not there the government signed the UN convention in 2007 was there no bill at all before 2007 or there were such similar bills or the bill of 95 which proposed reservation so I mean can you throw some light on that both internationally and in our country as well are the most marginalized sections of society India especially and of course in the west in Europe etc you can find disabled moving around the city like others like other other humans actually because through wheelchair it's much more accessible in the west in our country it's not that that much accessibility is still being discussed leave aside the implementation still being discussed now now you have the government coming up with an accessible India campaign a lot now now they're actually and its focus also on major cities cities like Delhi or metros and all cities we're not talking about going to the rural areas where the much of the disabled population lives that's that's a different issue but still I'm just trying to so 48 years after independence only you had a law no right until 1995 you had no law that would address some concerns of this of course you had the rehabilitation council of India act or there are actually four legislations that govern the disabled of the country 95 only this this act came into being so before that there was no talk of disability anywhere this is also come about because of some international pressure some local movement building up and all that you see if you talk about the constitution you see the in the constitution there are article 15 1 and article 16 2 talk about grounds on which discrimination is prohibited prohibited grounds of discrimination discrimination is prohibited on the grounds of caste on the grounds of religion on the grounds of language on the grounds of sex various other things but disability is not talked about in those so we have been from the right since our inception what we have been talking about is this this should be an amendment that should be moved to the constitution to make discrimination on the grounds of disability also prohibited you've talked about continuously how the member of parliament from the left organization specifically cpm have contributed in pushing this bill in the parliament but have they have been involved has there been involvement of any other political organization in your entire movement see disability as I said you see disability is still I said people are marginalized this is this is not an issue for most of the mainstream political parties the left especially the cpm has been taking up this issue in a serious and a concerted manner I'm going to talk to you so last three party congresses of cpm actually have adopted resolutions adopted resolutions on one issue or the other of talking about disability no other political party has actually talked about even talked about disability research if you go through the discussion the raj sabha you will find actually both the ruling party and the congress were for passing of the bill without any discussions they didn't want to move amendments either in the raj sabha there were actually all the amendments major amendments or substantive amendments were moved by cpm and peace the congress of sub-democracy made some made some amendments which were up which he didn't move also he didn't press for moving those amendments also just mentioned but that we're not substantive in nature as far as my this thing my reading goes so left has been serious support serious about this issue as it has been about other social issues as if we talk about your organization national platform for rights of disabled when was it formed can you throw some light on what was the need to bring this organization and how did it develop we felt the need actually there is a huge gap in terms of movement as far as disabled accounts there are thousands of organizations working in the country among disabled small small organizations most of them are most of them do is actually service delivery some do advocacy also but there there are NGOs actually there's not one problem between service service delivery and advocacy also some of them being but they are not membership based organizations they do not actually represent the whole movement as such some are specific disability specific specific disability like for the blind like the deaf or like that and they're not possible there are cross disability organizations also but they're small in terms of membership or the mobilization capacity is concerned so there was a huge gap at the national level to do advocacy and to bring pressure on the government to change in due policy interventions also we need to we needed to fill that gap and to also take this movement in a right direction actually we need to give a policy direction in a right direction to this movement so we felt the need we formed we came together at a convention Calcutta in 2010 we formed a representation from 10 states came and then we formed this platform for the national level out of formation of the platform of this national level we started building units in the states in many of the states now we have units in 14 different states and many of them who are not associated with us have no link with us or movements are now wanting to become affiliates of this platform or are applying for being become affiliates of this platform so with one step achieved what's the way forward what's what are your next plans and I mean what's the way ahead to take this entire bill so that I mean I've read the press statements so that the promises made are actually implemented on the ground first thing will be to see whether the other concerns can be addressed or not the assurance that the ministry has given in parliament through the MPs we would like to see that those are actually in whatever manner it comes in the rules he has said so we will have to keep a watch on how the rules are framed second thing is implementation is going to be a huge task even this 95 act only with seven disabilities one of the major things that we have been actually raising is about certification the certificate is a basic document for any entitlement the disabled has to get exactly but we do we distribute the census figures we say it is not it has not been a right counting even if you go by the UN standards or WHO standards it has not been a right counting it is an under counting even but even if you say that take the 2011 census as a correct figure even by those standards what the ministry says the annual report of 15 15 16 ministry of social justice department disabled FSA is there only 49.5 percent of disabled population identified with the 2011 census have been issued certificate so the majority of the of the disabled population or if you say 50 percent of disabled population do not possess certificates so all entitlements whether it be in the field for education employment or other concessions like rail travel or whatever the government has in schemes he is not entitled to he cannot even file a case under the act unless he has a certificate so all these things is deprived of now you have a huge task from 7th disabilities you have increased 21 who is going to certify them thanks a lot for giving us your time and as things proceed we'll be coming back to you on such issues thank you for watching news click